When you walk through the doors of the MEININGER Hotel in Geneva’s Charmilles district, you feel like you have stepped into Christopher Nolan's film “Oppenheimer”. A ping-pong table that looks like a portal to another dimension, armchairs shaped like particles, photos in the common rooms representing both the infinitely small and the infinitely large...

But here, one thing is for sure: in this hotel – the 36th for the German brand – both science and the CERN (the renowned international institution located just a few kilometres from the hotel) are given the limelight – as is authenticity. Here, there are not any digital terminals to coldly welcome guests, and there is no dress code turning hotel staff into carbon copies of each other either. “I tell them to be themselves!” explains the manager, Grégoire. Guests at this colourful hotel are greeted by authentic and very real people, each with their own diverse life paths – all of which bear the hallmarks of an international background.

A melting pot of culture(s) starting in childhood

And indeed, Grégoire embodies this international authenticity! In fact, he “fell into it as a child”. With a father who not only trained, but was a teacher at the Lausanne Hotel School, our hotel manager was able to take full advantage of the cultural vibrancy of this prestigious international institution – especially in terms of its gastronomic training restaurant!  

Was it the training restaurant’s star that inspired Grégoire to spread the values of hospitality? Regardless, it certainly gave him a taste for the world. From 2014 to 2015, in his early twenties, he jumps into the saddle to gain experience at the Four Seasons Resort, located in a Renaissance palace in Florence. Then, leaving the West, he heads East, to manage a group of restaurants in Hong Kong.

When he reflects on this period, the two words that immediately spring to Grégoire's mind are: “exciting” and “open”. And it is these very words that are carefully packed in his suitcases when, in 2021, he returns to Switzerland as Assistant Manager of the MEININGER Hotel in Geneva, right in the heart of QUARTET. The advantages of this space? In Grégoire’s words, it is “a beating heart that is wonderfully well situated in terms of the airport and Cornavin train station.”

It is all about the people

“What drives me? The kind of hotel where you can be yourself, where the teams are respected, and where customer relations are our North Star ” explains Grégoire – a fittingly elegant approach, in keeping with the diversity of the hotel's guests. From corporate executives coming to Geneva for the Watches and Wonders Geneva fair, to Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) teachers, Northern European families, or backpackers, the people who stay in this colourful and welcoming place form a mosaic!